Kelley

surname · English · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Kelley is a surname, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is the 78th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: A surname from Irish, a less common spelling of Kelly.

rarermore common
  • AUAustralia1 in 374◐
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 423
  • CACanada1 in 426

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈596K ●

across 8 countries

#298 ●

of 16M given names

6 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
604 ●

12M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 760 ◐

United States

Spellings & scripts●

KellyLatin · English●6.2M records
КеллиCyrillic · Russian●384 records
켈리Hangul · Korean●3 records
เคลลยThai · Thai●1 records
ᲙელლიGeorgian · Georgian●1 records
ՔելլիArmenian · Armenian●0 records

3 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Kelly in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 18 more, Kellie in NZ New Zealand, IE Ireland, Keli in IN India and Këlly in EC Ecuador.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

A surname from Irish, a less common spelling of Kelly.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Kelley is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GB United Kingdom#78495,763678K rec.—81Kelly275
US United States#69437,5209.8M rec.1 in 760438KKelly604
AU Australia#72304,420351K rec.—104Kelly307
CA Canada#64192,960249K rec.—16Kelly262
BR Brazil—118,991△656 rec.1 in 1.8K119KKelly8
IN India—44,00425K rec.—2.9KKeli91
IT Italy#24942,85060K rec.—1Kelly107
FR France—25,255△78 rec.1 in 2.7K25K—12
DE Germany#61522,51431K rec.—listedKelly157
PH Philippines—20,97824K rec.——Kelly99
VE Venezuela—16,47711 rec.—1.4KKelly5
EC Ecuador—12,874△838 rec.1 in 1.3K13KKëlly56

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English1.4M85%
  • 69K4%
  • Spanish45K3%
  • German12K1%
  • French9.6K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English1,379,71585%
68,6674%
Spanish45,1473%
German11,9001%
French9,5931%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Kelley is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Italian surname3.1K records spelled Kelley2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, San Marino, Italy

    Also written Kelleÿ

74 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Over time●

05001K1.5K2K1900195020001.9K · 1968

Show as table
Kelley in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1882–2025
Yearrecords
18825
18846
18866
18876
18886
18905
18936
18946
18979
18986
190017
19018
190211
19045
19058
19065
19079
190811
19097
191011
191116
191218
191322
191417
191533
191630
191732
191831
191934
192046
192133
192228
192329
192424
192530
192631
192732
192828
192928
193025
193126
193221
193320
193417
193537
193618
193723
193822
193924
194030
194133
194240
194331
194432
194536
194644
194746
194831
194936
195046
195154
195265
195378
195473
195590
1956159
1957291
1958650
1959817
19601,004
19611,250
19621,311
19631,481
19641,537
19651,461
19661,516
19671,583
19681,918
19691,686
19701,497
19711,287
19721,217
19731,201
19741,208
19751,169
19761,100
19771,502
19781,363
19791,201
19801,084
1981952
19821,007
1983908
1984796
1985761
19861,001
19871,196
19881,126
1989957
1990887
1991700
1992703
1993570
1994498
1995420
1996351
1997296
1998275
1999235
2000206
2001155
2002171
2003129
2004106
200573
200689
200765
200863
200954
201054
201138
201246
201327
201439
201528
201622
201722
201829
201924
202029
202120
202217
202317
202417
202515

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 135 years between 1882–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1400160018002000Edward Kelley, b. 1555Barry Kelley, b. 1908DeForest Kelley, b. 1920Rich Kelley, b. 1953David Edward Kelley, b. 1956Sheila Kelley, b. 1961Josh Kelley, b. 1980Nathalie Kelley, b. 1985Ryan Kelley, b. 1986Elijah Kelley, b. 1986

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence●

Attested in 56 sources across 31 countries.

Official registers attesting Kelley
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010141K#198
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000138K#184
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020137K#203
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202041K#966
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20204K#966
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022584—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—566#12,020
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—515#14,029
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—64#22,067
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—62#38,657
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—62#38,213
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—45#9,002

Reference works 6

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 426 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Kelley?
We estimate roughly 596 thousand people bear Kelley (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
In which country does Kelley have the most bearers?
Kelley is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled kelly.
How common is Kelley compared with other names?
In the United Kingdom, Kelley is the 78th most common given name of 369,273 given names recorded there.
What does the name Kelley mean?
Recorded meaning: A surname from Irish, a less common spelling of Kelly.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kelley

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Kelley” — the 78th most common given name in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Kelley parses inside a full name →